1. The document analyzes the results of a benchmark study that assessed how 27 companies across 5 categories used social media across the customer journey.
2. On average, companies scored only 31% across the entire customer journey, with social use highest (51%) in the early awareness stage and lowest (21%) at the point of purchase. Many opportunities exist to better engage customers through social.
3. Some basic social tactics are underused, such as URL shorteners (31%) and forums (33%), despite their value. Channel disconnect is also common, with warmer social tones versus colder websites.
1. 1
Social Value Benchmark
Unlocking engagement opportunities
across the customer journey
2. 2
Executive Summary
This research aims to answer a simple question.
Do visible Social programmes undertake the
fundamental Customer Engagement activities
that drive sales, loyalty and advocacy?
OgilvyOne’s clients often come to us for
support on Social strategy, because Social is
underdelivering in terms of driving sustainable
Customer Engagement. Our Social Value
Navigator process helps our clients to embed
their Social programmes deeply in their
businesses. But to assess the Total Customer
Value of a Social programme requires a wide
range of internal data from sales and loyalty to
website analytics. But there is also a need for a
faster benchmark against competitors.
We have created the Social Value Benchmark
to assess companies against their direct
competitors and companies in other categories,
based on public information. Benchmark
assesses 27 companies across five categories. Our
objective scoring system has created a database
of 4,087 answers, categorised by journey stage,
channel used and company. At any stage of
the customer journey a score of 100% would
indicate that the basics of a category-appropriate
Social programme are in place.
Total Customer Value incorporates all forms of value that a customer brings to a business: Transactional, Loyalty, Advocacy and Collaboration.
3. 3
Analysed to find opportunities for better Customer Engagement through Social, we found:
1. Social is most actively used in the
early stages of customer journeys with
a score of 51% at awareness falling to
21% at the point of purchase.
2. Companies have significant
room for improvement, with an
average score of 31% across the
customer journey.
4. Many companies are reluctant
to leave the Social ‘safe zone’ and
engage with customers outside their
owned Social channels.
6. Social loyalty and advocacy
are particularly neglected with
average scores of 20% and 17%
respectively.
3. Some Social tactics are neglected,
despite their value. For instance URL
shorteners are a simple way to collect
data on which Social tactics are working,
but only get a benchmark score of 31%.
5. Channel disconnect is a common
phenomenon, with a colder, more
broadcast, tone by companies on
their websites than in Social.
4. 4
integrated, measured - and most of all, not
strategic. Only 10% of CMOs believe that Social
is well integrated with their broader strategy.
While we cannot see business objectives, we can
understand them at a category level, and thus
the potential roles that Social has in driving
business value. The Social Value Benchmark
scores these activities. A score of 100% at any
stage of a customer journey indicates that good
basics are in place.
To create the Social Value Benchmark we
chose five categories to give us a cross section
of different challenges for Social programmes.
For each category we worked with our clients,
industry experts and our client teams to
define a category customer journey for a target
customer. For each stage in this customer
journey we defined a role for Social - ranging
from very broad roles in raising awareness and
influencing favourability to closing sales and
nurturing loyalty and advocacy. For each of
these roles we worked to define benchmarks for
basic Social activities that would deliver that
part of the customer journey, and developed
a marking system for this. While assessing
whether a programme is cutting edge is beyond
the scope of this research, and indeed is what
our Social Value Navigator process does, this
research aimed to assess whether companies are
undertaking basic Social activities that fit their
business models. Finally we used this marking
system to mark five or six companies in each
category on their Social activities. We collected
over 4,087 data points, giving us an unrivalled
database of how these categories are delivering
Social programmes.
Why do Social programmes seem to be
disconnected from broader strategies for
customer engagement?
The promise of Social is, after all, simple. Social
relationships are central to our lives, and by
extension to how we engage customers. It’s the
oldest market research finding around - that the
biggest influences on us are our peers, friends
and family. And Social often shows good
returns. For instance Target’s research with
Facebook showed that Social advertising drove
27% higher sales than advertising without Social
endorsement.
But when marketers are asked what they are
doing, a dilemma becomes apparent.
On the one hand they recognise the importance
of Social and plan to increase spending on
Social by 144% over the next five years.
But on the other hand they struggle to
quantify whether Social gives them a return.
Surveys consistently show that only one in six
marketers feel they have a good quantitative
understanding of their returns, and only two in
six even have a good qualitative view.
Why is this? After all, the internet and modern
technology have given marketers more
knowledge than ever before about what makes
people tick.
Firstly, meaningful social media measurement
is complicated. Marketers are addressing this
through increased investment in analytics and
data management.
Secondly, and this is the focus of our research,
Social programmes are badly aligned with
overall business strategy. CMOs understand
that Social is not delivering because it is badly
Comscore: The Power of Like 2 http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2012/6/comScore_and_Facebook_
Release_The_Power_of_Like_2_How_Social_Marketing_Works
Duke University’s CMO Survey 2014 http://www.cmosurvey.org/results/
For instance ‘Getting Digital Right’ Milward Brown 2014.
http://www.cmosurvey.org/blog/do-marketers-know-what-they-want-from-social-media/
5. 5
Our research in more detail
There are six areas that stood out across categories.
1
Social is most actively used in the early stages of customer journeys with a score of 51%
at awareness falling to 21% at the point of purchase.
Social is barely used at many parts of the
customer journey. While almost all companies
examined use Social to drive awareness, with
a Benchmark score of 51% at the Awareness
stage, very few use it in loyalty or advocacy
programmes, or around the point of purchase,
despite the high value that customers put on
peer endorsement.
The average Benchmark score of 21% at the
point of purchase indicates that companies are
largely not trying to sell in Social, or to create
bonds immediately post purchase. Both of
these are reasonably simple to implement with
tactics as simple as asking buyers to follow
Social channels specifically for customers
immediately post purchase.
For many companies Social appears to
be synonymous with ‘What is done on my
Facebook page’ rather than ‘How do I use the
power of relationships to drive my marketing?’.
Activity rates are dramatically higher in
broadcast Social channels (e.g. posting
content on a Twitter feed) than when engaging
customers, even at the most basic level of
responding to customers who ask a question.
In some high ticket price categories such
as travel and automotive, brands often don’t
respond to customers’ questions even though
these questions are often when customers are
actively shopping.
http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/research-studies/digital-drives-auto-shopping.html
6. 6
60
50
40
30
20
10
Awareness Consideration Purchase Loyalty Advocacy &
Collaboration
Companies have significant room for improvement, with an average score of 31% across
the customer journey.
On average companies scored a Benchmark
score only 31% across the full customer
journey. There are some quick wins that even
relatively sophisticated companies could adopt
tomorrow. For instance, despite the role of
thought leadership in lead generation for B2B
companies, very few use Slideshare’s Lead
Capture option or even put links to register for
events in their Social feeds.
2
Average score by journey stage as a potential of total points available at that stage of the customer journey.
%
7. 7
Some Social tactics are neglected, despite their value. For instance URL shorteners are a
simple way to collect data on which Social tactics are working, but only get a benchmark
score of 31%.
Marketers appear largely unaware of many
Social tactics and channels. For instance, the
potential of Social activity to impact unbranded
discussions (e.g. through a hashtag) or
unbranded search results is very often
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
Website - Social integration
YouTube
Google+
Shortned URLs
LinkedIn
Blog
Pinterest
Slideshare
UGC Forums
neglected. Equally, forums are crucial for the
B2B customer journey, but often ignored by
B2B marketers.
3
Average scores for common Social tactics.
8. 8
Many companies are reluctant to leave the Social ‘safe zone’ and engage with customers
outside their owned channels.
There is often a reluctance from brands to
engage outside their owned channels. So if a
potential customer asks a question about a
brand without explicitly mentioning its Twitter
handle, then it is rare for brands to take
advantage of that opportunity.
B2B firms in particular are often good at
creating meaningful content. But after
There is often a stark divide in tone by
channels. Corporate websites are generally
rather cold, out of date and broadcast. On
balance even the weaker Social channels have
more warmth of tone and authenticity.
publishing it in Social they often fail to respond
to questions from potential clients. This is
something that would be unthinkable offline,
for instance at a conference. While this is
justifiable in some circumstances, we see no
evidence that this is thought through.
Channel disconnect is a common phenomenon, with a colder, more broadcast, tone by
companies on their websites than in Social.
4
5
9. 9
Social loyalty and advocacy are particularly neglected with average scores of 21% and 17%
respectively.
Over 20% of the companies in our study use
Net Promoter Score as a metric of business
success, and thus at a leadership level
understand the importance of customer
satisfaction in driving growth. Yet these same
companies also often fail to undertake simple
Social activities that would boost customer
satisfaction and loyalty, such as rapid response
to questions in Social, or connecting customers
to materials (such as a YouTube video or blog)
that make it easy to understand a complex B2B
piece of accounting software. Therefore the
average scores of 21% and 17% across Loyalty
and Advocacy are particularly low. This is
doubtless one of the reasons that our previous
research on Passion Brands has found that only
2% of positive brand experiences result in public
advocacy in Social channels.
Post purchase ‘bonding’ is a particularly
fruitful area for many companies, particularly
in high engagement categories. Most
companies have a cooling off period, so the
point of purchase isn’t final. More importantly,
post-purchase bonding with the vendor has
a substantial impact on long-term loyalty
and advocacy. There are many opportunities
for companies to improve this bonding, for
instance by soliciting feedback post purchase
(and responding to that feedback) or by
persuading customers to opt-in to Social
channels so they are kept informed on new
products, and develop a deeper relationship
with the business.
6
See Bain’s work with Intuit as an example of post purchase product demystification http://www.bain.com/publications/
articles/do-your-b2b-customers-promote-your-business.aspx
http://www.slideshare.net/socialogilvy/socialogilvy-advocacy-studyjuly2013-1
10. B2B software
• Most companies are present, and active, in
a wide range of the relevant channels. The
most common failings in early stages of
the journey are failing to use more visual
Social channels. B2B marketers often seem
to implicitly assume that attractive content
which is easy to consume, while containing
meaningful business insights, is not as
relevant to B2B as it is to B2C.
• Active companies are, throughout the
journey, reaching out to places where
they might find new customers such as
independent forums (which B2B buyers
value highly), and by using unbranded
hashtags and other tactics that will increase
visibility for people researching the category.
• Testimonials, ratings, reviews and other
forms of customer endorsement are most
commonly used on company websites. But,
they rarely appear in Social channels such as
Twitter, despite their acknowledged value in
driving purchases.
• Lead generation tools such as invitations
to webinars are occasionally used but they
are rarely used to generate attendance at the
higher value offline events. What starts in
Social usually stays in Social.
B2B software is one of the more advanced
categories in our research, doubtless reflecting
its heritage as relatively early to using the
internet as a core part of their business model.
As with the other categories the use of Social
declines as customers go through the journey,
leading to missed opportunities that close sales
or cement loyalty with the brand. However,
performance in the earlier parts of the journey
are significantly better:
10
11. • Blogs are also underused as a way
of delivering technical and practical
information to buyers – on average scoring
only 62%.
• While Google+ is now routinely used, it is
often not integrated well with the broader
Google ecosystem by brands. So for
instance, if a brand does a public Google
Hangout it often doesn’t effectively link to it
from its other Social properties, so limiting
its discovery in search.
When looked at through the lense of channels,
the major category themes are:
• The average score for use of LinkedIn
is 75%, it’s substantially higher than the
Forum score of 33%. Whilst LinkedIn has an
impressive reach, B2B surveys typically show
that forums are used more.
• Facebook is inconsistently used for
marketing, despite its extremely high
audience penetration, with just 61% of
Benchmark tactics used. The stereotype
that B2B buyers don’t use Facebook isn’t
helpful to marketers, not least because of
the amount of personal time they spend on
the platform.
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Lead Back Identify Problem Investigate Shortlist Evaluation Purchase
Average benchmark score
%
11
12. 12
Travel
and restaurants. While this level of Social
integration is not necessarily complex, no
travel brand that we examined uses it.
• All brands examined respond to questions
in Social, though more consistently through
Twitter than other channels. While many
brands also consistently re-tweet positive
customer feedback, they often do not re-share
positive endorsements that occur in
other Social channels.
The travel industry’s business model of fixed
perishable inventory, often sold through
intermediaries with significant levels of
commission. This means that there is a premium
on driving direct bookings and fostering loyalty
within regular travellers. However, Social’s use
often fails to reflect this.
The average Social Value Benchmark score
declines from over 70% at the inspirational
stage of the customer journey; it then drops
to less than 40% at the point of purchase,
dropping further to less than 20% once people
are experiencing the products. Therefore there
are many missed opportunities to close sales or
cement loyalty.
• Brand content early on in the customer
journey provides many opportunities to
engage potential customers. But once
somebody expresses an interest in a brand’s
content it is relatively rare for a company
to encourage them to subscribe to an
appropriate Social channel so that they are
engaged with follow up messaging.
• Social logins allow brands to provide
personalised travel information, as other
companies outside the Benchmark evaluation
do. For instance, Tripadvisor allows users
to see which cities their Facebook friends
have been to, what they did there and to
see how highly they rated sights, hotels
13. Dreaming Planning Purchase Experiencing Sharing
are typically poorly integrated, despite
the high value that hotels and airlines can
drive through channel shift. For instance,
many YouTube channels don’t link to the
parent website, to other Social channels or
even encourage the user to subscribe to the
YouTube channel. Equally websites often
miss opportunities to deepen relationships
through driving customers to Social
channels.
• Social is rarely integrated into loyalty
programmes, so missing an opportunity to
personalise and contextualise information.
• There appear to be very few post purchase
attempts to drive advocacy through Social,
again surprising given the role of friends and
family in choosing destinations, hotels and
airlines.
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Average benchmark score
• Travel brands are also rarely using the
informal reviews such as testimonials on
their non-Twitter Social channels, despite
the role that reviews play in planning trips.
Ratings and reviews are inconsistently used,
even though half of travellers use them on
the route to travel purchases.
• Websites that pull feeds of reviews from
Tripadvisor, for example always draw the
text of reviews only, rather than pictures that
would bring these reviews to life.
• The typical customer experience in travel
is to search on, and use, multiple devices
throughout the journey, for instance
dreaming about destinations when looking
at Social content on mobile, researching in
more depth, and buying, on desktop and
tablets, and then travelling with mobile
devices. However, despite this channel
and device hopping, websites and Social
%
13
14. 14
FMCG - Beverages
Social holds out the opportunity for FMCG
to build stronger, and direct, relationships
with its consumers that weren’t possible in
the past. However, while there is some limited
evidence of programmes to promote loyalty, this
opportunity is largely unexploited.
FMCG scores substantially better on average at
the Awareness (49%) and Consideration (24%)
stages of the customer journey than elsewhere,
reflecting the category’s traditional emphasis
on brand advertising. This is mainly driven by
the brand’s creating and deploying interesting
pieces of content for a mass consumer
audience, and then having a two-way dialogue
with their consumers.
The major missed opportunities in the early part
of the journey are to engage consumers more
deeply. While this was difficult in traditional
brand advertising, brands in FMCG are often,
implicitly, refusing to engage consumers more
deeply, even when consumers are eager for this
engagement. For instance, ratings and reviews
are rarely seen anywhere in Social channels,
despite their role in providing Social proof that
a brand is high quality. Equally while brands
have a legitimate role in wider public discussion,
for instance a cold drink could enter discussions
on hot weather, most of them are restricted to
broadcasting their views, rather than seeking out
relevant conversations to join, such as by using
unbranded hashtags that would surface their
content in appropriate locations.
15. 15
a more respectable (though still low) 20%.
However, there are still very large missed
opportunities at this stage: for instance,
through better integration of packaging
with Social channels.
Advocacy programmes are weak though, with
an average score of 11%. Given the value of
repeat purchases and habit forming in FMCG,
this is a substantial missed opportunity. Simple
tactics such as re-posting positive customer
experiences and asking customers to be
advocates are largely neglected.
At the point of purchase this challenge becomes
most evident. While online shopping for FMCG
brands is still only relatively small at 5-6% of
UK groceries, we would expect to see most
brands experimenting with it, not least because
of the ability to drive sampling and repeat
purchases. However, when we examined FMCG
brands, there was virtually no experimentation
going on.
The post purchase picture is brighter. Most
brands have some additional level of resources
for existing customers on sourcing information
for example, so the average loyalty score is
50
40
30
20
10
0
Awareness Consideration Purchase Loyalty Advocacy
Average benchmark score
6http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/06/supermarkets-open-dark-stores-online-food-shopping-expands
%
16. 16
B2B logistics
Five major themes are apparent across the
category
• In the early stages of the journey, activity is
largely broadcast brand advertising. Even
on this, narrow role, most companies fail to
undertake simple actions that would better
surface their content to potential customers.
For instance, unbranded hashtags that make
them more visible in search to people who
are searching for information in the category.
• As customers start to investigate potential
suppliers, logistics providers are failing to
provide them with the information that they
need. Tactics that involve providing practical
information for potential customers, such as a
regularly updated blog or use of forums, are
largely neglected. Brands often fail to take
advantage of the most basic opportunities
such as answering customer questions on
their Social channels. Very few reach out on
forums or Twitter where potential customers
are asking unbranded questions.
B2B clients often tell us that their biggest
business challenge is getting visibility for their
experts before a potential client draws up the
shortlist for a project, both online and offline.
Hence we would expect prioritisation of a)
participation where customers are, and b)
conversion of these conversations through lead
generation tools such as invitations to webinars
or events.
However, B2B logistics companies perform
poorly in Social, across the whole of the
customer journey. As in other categories the use
of Social declines as customers go through the
journey, leading to missed opportunities to close
sales or cement loyalty:
• Even in the early stages of the journey,
companies are executing less than 30% of
the available Social tactics on average.
• Over the journey stages, from the point of
Purchase to Cross-selling and deepening
Loyalty, less than 15% of opportunities
are used.
17. • Customer care through Social is increasingly
common, and appropriately fast. This
responds to an important customer need
for reassurance and problem resolution.
However, its execution is inconsistent. For
instance, one company’s Twitter feed has a
prominent picture visible to customers of
a badly delivered parcel. While the service
problem is real, the visibility has been driven
by the corporate brand itself re-posting
the picture. The customer care feed is thus
inadvertently damaging its own brand.
• Reviews and customer testimonials are
only used inconsistently to close the deal
around the point of purchase and cement
loyalty. When testimonials are used they are
overwhelmingly on corporate websites and
rarely extend to Social, despite the simple
opportunities available, such as re-tweeting
positive customer feedback.
• From purchase onwards there are many
missed opportunities to cross sell products
and deepen customer loyalty: for instance,
logistics companies do relatively little to
encourage Social sharing. Social sharing
by customers isn’t just valuable as a source
of advocacy. It is also valuable in driving
loyalty by encouraging customers to make
a visible public commitment to brands,
making them less likely to churn later.
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Consideration Preference Conversion Cross-Sell Loyalty
Average benchmark score
%
17
18. 18
Automotive
• Sharing functionality is restricted to
Social channels - despite the key role of
peer discussions in purchasing. Most car
manufacturers have a configuration tool
on their website to find out the cost of a
car with personalised extras, but few of
them make it easy to share this. Given the
role of friends and family in influencing
car decisions this is a significant, and
easy to fix, opportunity.
• Lead generation, at the basic level of
booking test drives, is largely unused,
despite its high value.
• There is almost no attempt by brands
to engage in external discussions and
communities, despite their role informing
customers who are looking for practical
information.
• Manufacturers fail to respond to many
questions in Social, even though many
of these are either existing or potential
customers. Manufacturers also often make it
Automotive companies miss opportunities to
drive Total Customer Value through loyalty,
advocacy and collaboration with customers.
Whilst brands use Social creatively to convey
the value of their cars, this tactic is much
stronger at early stages of the customer
journey with an average score of 70% at the
Consideration stage, followed by a steep decline
through purchase to loyalty and advocacy.
However, despite the high value of engaging
customers up to and beyond purchase, there are
many missed opportunities in automotive:
• Brand websites are usually somewhat
clinical. This means that many of the key
research objectives of customers, such as
reviews, can only be found on external sites,
beyond brand influence.
• Dealers are often poorly integrated, even
though the vast majority of car purchases
happen at a dealer. For instance, simply
finding a dealer can be quite a complex
experience.
19. 19
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70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Consider Explore Select Purchase Maintain Renew
Average benchmark score
• Post purchase, manufacturers generally
provide significant amounts of information
to their customers. But very little attempt
is made to instil owner pride or provide
tailored experiences. Manufacturer CRM
data, and Social graph data, are hardly ever
used to provide any sort of contextualised
experience, even as simple as offering family
cars to people who have already purchased a
family car.
hard to contact them through their website,
so discouraging questions from potential
and actual customers.
• Customer Service information videos, FAQs,
Blogs and other ways of getting product
updates and useful information out to
owners are neglected, making it hard for
many owners to self serve. Given the value
of loyalty and advocacy in this market, this
is a major missed opportunity.
7http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/research-studies/digital-drives-auto-shopping.html
%
20. 20
The Social Value Benchmark
research methodology
loyalty and advocacy. Customer journeys are
used to ensure that the entire approach is
rooted in the Total Customer Value components
of Transaction, Loyalty, Advocacy and
Collaboration. For each customer journey stage,
one or more roles of Social are defined. And for
each role of Social a number of questions are
defined.
the company, so there is a relationship across
the full customer journey. B2C journeys are
significantly more diverse.
For instance, in B2B software the first stage of
the customer journey was a ‘lean back’ stage
where customers are not actively looking for
information, but instead relatively passively
consuming information from peers and
industry experts.
With the exception of B2B accounting
software, all customer journeys went past the
point of Transaction to judge Social’s role in
driving Loyalty, Advocacy and Collaboration.
The relatively small number of collaboration
programmes led us to report them under
Advocacy and Loyalty, as appropriate.
Our research used expert insight from Ogilvy’s
Social community, client and category
understanding from Ogilvy client teams, Ogilvy
clients and external partners. We undertook a
five-stage process, fully documented and shared
with our clients.
This research methodology aims to measure
whether visible Social programmes drive sales,
1. Defining the customer journey
All Ogilvy clients already have a well defined
customer journey, used as the basis for planning
Customer Engagement programmes for our
clients. Choices at this stage were to define
the ambition of the customer journey (e.g.
the full journey or just the focus for Ogilvy’s
current work?), markets (global, local or a
combination) and target customer personas.
For instance in the B2B accounting category
we focused on a persona of younger business
owners, typically relatively recent startups. This
choice of customer personas then influenced the
competitor set chosen.
Customer journey stages are relatively similar
within the B2B categories, in that the target
customers are typically buying directly from
21. 21
2. Defining the role of Social for each stage in the customer journey
For instance, in B2B software’s ‘lean-back’ stage,
one role of Social was defined as increasing
awareness and a familiarity of the brand through
increasing its prominence through social
sharing. Other common Social roles included
customer dialogue such as customer services,
social proof, reviews and testimonials.
Social’s role can be dramatically different
by both category and stage in the customer
journey. To focus in on the role of Social we
examined both successful client and competitor
Social programmes in the category – and other
successful Social programmes that address
similar challenges in other categories.
3. Defining questions to assess whether Social is being used well for each stage of the customer journey
To successfully answer a question such as
‘Is Social being successfully used to raise
awareness’ we need data points that:
a) Are meaningful indicators of whether a brand
has a coherent Social strategy. For instance, it is
very unlikely that a brand with a strong Social
strategy will be failing to use URL shorteners
in Social, because they would be losing a
significant source of data on their impact.
b) Are possible to judge from public data. We
created scoring criteria for each data point, so
that there was consistency within and between
categories for the same data point.
However, to enable robust comparisons we
excluded data points that:
a) Needed internal client data, such as sales or
profits, to judge them, because we would not be
able to compare across companies.
b) Were qualitative. While we believe that
qualitative judgement is extremely important,
it is not quantifiable and therefore we excluded
qualitative judgements as much as possible.
To source these data points we examined
companies both in the category, and in
categories that faced similar challenges, as well
as industry research on customer journeys.
22. 22
and Social experts to ensure consistency.
We also made amendments to research
methodologies at this stage.
Each of the 4,087 data points contains:
• Category
• Company
• Cross-category customer journey stage (e.g.
‘Awareness’)
• Category customer journey stage (e.g.
‘lean-back’)
• Property (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
• Question (e.g. ‘Is the company using
Social graph to provide contextual
recommendations?’)
• Score
• Measurement scale
• Notes.
4. The data gathered
At the end of this stage in the research we
typically had, for each category:
• Five journey stages
• One role of Social per stage, justified and
explained in more depth for researchers and
clients
• 5-10 questions per journey stage, to assess
whether Social was being used consistently
to achieve business objectives
• 5-10 Social properties we would use to assess
each of these questions
• 5-6 companies assessed per category.
On average we assessed each company on 151
questions, for a total of 4,087 questions assessed.
4. Judging the questions
Each researcher was either an Ogilvy Social
expert or planner on the relevant account. After
being fully briefed on the research process, their
research outputs were cross-checked by category
5. Analysis
Category and client findings were cross-checked
with experts and clients to ensure robustness –
though given their close involvement through
the process no major changes resulted at this
stage.
The data is now available for analysis for Ogilvy
clients as a database to interrogate.
23. 23
How OgilvyOne can help you
• Map to the key engagement opportunities
in their customer journey
• Provide visibility of what competitors
are doing
• And companies with similar challenges
in other categories
• We then help clients scope these out
in depth to create a Social strategy
and programme for the future that’s
rooted in their business, and credible
to C-suite stakeholders.
Category Companies Normalised journey stages
B2B financial software Sage, Xero, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Awareness, Consideration, Purchase
Premium automotive Landrover, BMW, Audi, Jaguar, Mercedes Awareness, Consideration, Purchase,
The full list examined is: Twitter, Facebook,
blogs, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest,
Slideshare, forums, YouTube, shortened URLs,
Social logins, website, social lead generation,
search.
OgilvyOne’s Social Value Navigator™ can
help you make sense of whether your Social is
delivering, and what Social you should, and
should not, be doing.
We start by rooting our analysis in clients
business objectives, target audiences and the
customer journey that goes alongside them,
as part of our broader Customer Engagement
planning process.
We then undertake a Social Value mapping
process scoping potential Social activities that -
Categories, companies and journey stages assessed
Properties examined
We do not believe that companies should
have a channel based approach. However, for
the purpose of analysis every question was
categorised either with a channel or under
another grouping such as Shortened URLs, to
enable clearer cross-category analysis.
Loyalty, Advocacy
B2B logistics UPS, DHL, Parcelforce, TNT, Fedex, DPD Awareness, Consideration, Purchase,
Loyalty, Advocacy
Travel - hotels, airlines, aggregators British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Expedia,
Hilton, Holiday Inn, Marriott
Awareness, Consideration, Purchase,
Loyalty, Advocacy
FMCG - beverages Nescafe Gold Blend, Coca Cola, Tetley,
Douwe Egberts, PG Tips
Awareness, Consideration, Purchase,
Loyalty, Advocacy
24. 24
FAQs
Is the quality of content in Social
assessed here?
A comprehensive assessment of content quality
in Social requires a full Social Analytics and
Social Content Strategy, so is beyond the remit
of this research.
However, a number of questions in the research
assess proxies for quality, such as growth
of audiences in Social channels, clicks on
links (where data is public) and other forms
of audience engagement. While these are
approximate, in many cases very low levels of
interaction occur, indicating that the content is
not engaging its audience.
Does this assess internal organisation or
resourcing of Social?
No, but this is something we benchmark with
clients when we undertake the Social Value
Navigator process.
Where are the full questions?
A number of the questions have been published,
or referenced, in this research report. The full set
of questions is available to Ogilvy clients.
Does this assess overall effectiveness of Social
strategies?
Yes and no.
Yes - because it assesses whether companies
reach the Social Value Benchmark. This allows
us to understand if the company is appropriately
using Social across the customer journey.
No - because a full Social strategy needs to
integrate with the individual company’s broader
business and marketing strategies. We do this
for clients through Social Value Navigator - an
in-depth process for creating Social strategies
that drive business results.
Does this assess qualitative delivery of Social?
No.
Qualitative assessments are important, but
are hard to do without both in-depth analysis
of the company and its business strategy. The
Social Value Benchmark though, by judging the
essential tactics that are needed for each stage of
the customer journey, allows us to understand
whether a company has the infrastructure in
place to drive results.
25. 25
Is this global research?
Each category has been examined from the
point of view of a UK customer. However,
in many cases companies either direct UK
customers to global Social channels or do
not have UK channels. In these cases, where
appropriate, global channels have been scored.
Acknowledgements
Authors: Rob Blackie & Emily Allen
Editor: Ann Higgins
This research required a vast amount of wisdom from Ogilvy colleagues and clients, including:
Alexandra von Puttkamer, Anders Kinberg, Andrew Lopez, Ann Higgins, Annette King, Anya King,
Brian Jensen, Caolan Hunter, Clare Lawson, Donald Pirie, Emily Allen, Gareth Richards, Gosha
Khuchua, Irfan Kamal, James Myers, James Whatley, Jo Coombs, Joana Chau, Jonathan Gapper,
Jonathan Nguyen, Joseph Grigg, Keshan Bolaky, Leo Ryan, Marcus de Pfeiffer Key, Margherita
Tuvo, Marshall Manson,Matt Holt, Mel Stanley, Neil Hawke, Patou Nuytemans, Rachel Armstrong-
Jones, Rob Bartlett, Sam Williams-Thomas, Shailen Joshi, Simon Luff, Steve Jenkins, Tara Davanzati,
Thomas Crampton.
If you would like more information on how OgilvyOne can help you, please contact Tracey Barber,
New Business & Marketing Director OgilvyOne on +44 (0)20 7566 7407, or tweet us @ogilvyone or
@robblackie_oo